THE DOG GETS UP AT SEVEN

For those of you that know me, you know that I have two rather big dogs. One being Gus, a one year old Aussiedor whom we adopted and the second being a 7 month old Great Dane puppy named Samson. They are both weighing in at 90+ lbs with Samson obviously still growing. This has been an experience all in its own with raising these two frisky fur balls. However throughout the house training and obedient training that we have been working on they have learned so much. 

Another disclaimer….

I am a borderline bossy, obsessive compulsive, control freak. Not that that is much of a surprise to some of you.

How has that helped train our dogs?

The dogs are on strict schedules; which is great until it is not.

As I mentioned before I am a bit of a control freak. As we were beginning to crate train the dogs I put them on a strict schedule where they went to bed at 8pm and got up at 6:30am, when I would be getting ready for work. They are so accustomed to this schedule now that around 7:45pm the Aussiedor is asking to go out and trying to get us to put him in his cage to go to bed. The Great Dane is usually snoozing on the couch because he realizes its bed time and will sleep everywhere and anywhere. Once in bed the dogs are in for the night (Other than some random times when they may really have to go; which they bark or whimper to let us know). Now that they are trained there are nights we attempt to keep them up later. They aren’t puppies that are chewing the house and having accidents so we would rather them stay up with us. Gus will ask to go out every five minutes until he is put to bed in his cage because he too enjoys routine just as much as I do. This isn’t something to specifically complain about but it would be nice on a cozy winter night to snuggle up with a puppy or two before bed but they still want those cages at specific times of night. However, I have noticed one challenge when it comes to the morning in which each of them went through.

The bark or whimper in the morning at 6:25. We fell for this… and we fell for it twice.

When Gus was about 6 months he woke me up five minutes before the alarm went off. I got up and let him out since he never barked in the morning assuming that it was close to the morning routine and must really have had to go to the bathroom. Turns out he caught on to the barking gets me out routine in the morning and within a month he was barking at 4:30 in the morning thinking that’s the trick, I want out. Once this had happened I realized that he was conditioning himself and me to fall for these antics. What was I going to do? Well for starter, I googled… doesn’t everyone? After some googling I realized that I needed him to come to terms with the fact that we don’t get up until WE hear the alarm clock go off. The next day it was 5:20 and the little guy was barking. I set an alarm for 5:25 and let him bark for five minutes and once the alarm sounded I let him out. The next day it was 6:05 and I proceeded to let him bark until the alarm went off a few minutes later. After a week he understood that we don’t get up till the alarm goes off. Great! We did it! Woohoo!

Then here comes Samson…

Gus is so well behaved that we decided he needed a buddy. Someone to play with, love, and enjoy spend time with; especially when we are at work.  This is great!

Samson is crate trained… Samson is now 7 months old… here comes the whimper.

Since Samson has had no problems with accidents in his cage any more he has been able to sleep in his cage until it is time to get up just like his brother. Then one morning he whimpers. This isn’t a usually a sound he makes so oh my goodness we should let him out, he’s been doing so good holding it I don’t want him to backtrack… and guess what happened… the whimpering escape the cage idea is now in his head.  After about a week of his whimpering and us letting him out and re-caging him until morning, we realized that this action was going to continue if we don’t do something. Back to the alarm clock strategy it is. It’s been three days and today he didn’t make a peep. It was a 7 o’clock wake up since we were on a two hour delay and my boyfriend and I are both teachers so we wanted those extra minutes.

We did it! Victory has finally won!

What I found throughout these situations is that our dogs right now will continue to get up at 6:30 during the week and 7 on the weekends for the time being. They may take a while before we are able to let them sleep in or stay up late since they are so adapted to their routines. (We tried letting them sleep with us and with their routines being so regimented that didn’t work.) However this is okay. We are able to keep them in their routine as best we can until eventually they may be more accepting of change.

What does this mean about routines?

Routines can be wonderful things that keep order, organization, and all things running smoothly. However, changes in routine can be hard. Not just for dogs but for us to. We get in these routines and once they are mixed up we can feel like our world is upside down. We get so caught up in the routines of our lives that once it is altered we can feel lost and confused. We can begin to feel overwhelmed because it isn’t planned out or going as our typical schedules normally would. It is good to keep routines but at the same time we need to be open to embrace a change in routine because our whole lives can’t always be a constant routine of actions. We encounter surprises and changes that we can’t control and we have to learn to be able to go with the flow when our routines break. We don’t need to feel like we are falling in a downhill spiral when things don’t go as planned.  Bottom line is, routines can be amazing but we all need to accept the fact that we have to learn to better embrace when our routines are altered and deviated from. Everything is still going to be alright even when we face changes that we don’t anticipate.